UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor: Investigate the Possibility that Israel is Committing the Crime of Genocide Against the Palestinian People

The past that Netanyahu rejects is the one designed after World War II to criminalise behaviours such as the waging of aggressive war, genocide and apartheid. Some of these behaviours had for centuries threatened European Jews. Netanyahu, and those who voted for him, no longer identify with the suffering of their European ancestors. Israel is now a strong, aggressive, land-hungry power much like 19th century Russia and Germany. Many Israeli Jews are also, like Donald Trump’s core supporters, ethnic racists and supremacists.

We need to abolish the settler-colonial mindset, which is at the root of the problem, indeed, its very cause. Just as revolutionary visionaries advocate prison abolition, rather than prison reform, we need to advocate indigenous liberation, not setter-colonial “reform.” To elaborate on the comparison, “prison reform” assumes that the institution of incarcerating criminals is not essentially flawed, and can be improved upon. In the settler-colonial context, “reformers” assume that the US and Israel are not fundamentally and violently racist, they can become “multiethnic democracies.” On the other hand, prison abolitionists want a world without prisons, because incarceration itself, not just the way it is currently practiced, is wrong. They argue that incarceration is never the solution, and can only have a detrimental effect on the incarcerated and society at large. Settler-colonial abolitionists, then, would seek an abolition, rather than a “reform” of the US and Israel, whose very existence hinges on indigenous genocide, so as to respect indigenous sovereignty.

In a Tablet piece, Benjamin Gladstoneadvocated for the inclusion of Jews into intersectionality. While the author seems to understand Crenshaw’s theory, he fails to view Jews outside of Zionist frameworks. His argument that “Jewish issues do belong in the intersectional justice movement,” is of course correct. However, by equating anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, he postulates both as “serious intersectional problems,” and thus alleges anti-Jewish racism to be a feature of intersectionality. Even more, the author paints Zionism as a “liberation movement” that “has the potential to not only coexist with but also support and energize other liberation movements, from women’s liberation to Palestinian nationalism.” This attempt to romanticize a genocidal settler-colonial movement overwrites the plight of Palestinians and marginalizes Jewish opposition to Zionism.

Anna Ben-Hur, a junior student majoring in STPEC, attended the event because she felt connected to Palestinian issues. “My family is part Israeli, although I am American. I have visited there and was confused about the conflict and genocide there,” she said. “This event successfully raised awareness of these issues. We cared about Palestinian rights.”

Members of Within Our Lifetime, a youth organization for Palestine, broke the tension in the air with a cheerful Dabka (Palestinian folk dance) flash-mob. The dance was followed by a string of chants including: “Warren Kanders you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide”; “from Brooklyn to Palestine, occupation is a crime”; and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”…“Kanders is art washing through his blood money as a profiteer. We see this normalization in Israel, where they’re trying to attract famous artists to come and perform, while Palestinian women and children are being attacked with rubber bullets and tear gas,” said another member of Within Our Lifetime. “We won’t let those who profit of Israel’s settler colonialism and the genocide of Palestinians hide in the board rooms of museums.”

There are definite and obvious merits of joining the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, say the moral standing to oppose and condemn genocidal states like Israel and Myanmar. However, there is no necessity to wait for its ratification first to carry out the necessary institutional reforms to prevent and punish genocide.

Omar has made anti-Israel statements and antagonized AIPAC, but has nothing to say about Zionism. The distinction matters. Without analysis of Zionism as a settler colonial ideology central to a capitalist order that fosters massive global iniquity, we end up reifying the notion of a fundamentally decent United States prone to incomprehensible lapses of judgment, a perspective Omar likesto utilize. In fact, reducing US support for Israel to effective lobbying absolves the architects of genocide on both sides of the Atlantic.

Zionists have inhabited Palestine since 1948, when over 750,000 indigenous Palestinians were expelled from their land during the Nakba (or “The Great Catastrophe,” as it is known by Palestinians), the deliberate mass expulsion, ethnic cleansing, and genocide intended to facilitate the creation of the new state of Israel. The Nakba didn’t start and end in 1948— it still continues today, as Palestinians are displaced and killed while Israel works to build more settlements.